Refresh the Library

Re-establishes the links between the Library catalog and the physical locatioin of the music files.

Sometimes the Library catalog gets grumpy, and loses its link to where the music files are located. You will know this has happened when a large number of songs have an exclamation mark to their left and when you try and play them you get a message that the file cannot be found.

To re-establish contact with all the files, one technique is to tell iTunes to re-import all the music in the music library. For this to work without duplicating all the songs, the folder bing imported must be exactly the same as the folder iTunes currently thinks is where the music is located.

Here's how to do this:

• 1. Open the Preferences from the Edit menu.

  2. Click on the Advanced tab.

  3. Note the exact path name of iTunes Media folder location:

• 1. Click Cancel to close the Preferences window.

  2. Select Add Folder to Library from the File menu.

  3. If the location is \\NETWORK-DATA\Volume_1\Music\iTunes like it is in this example, then iTunes is expecting to access the network drive directly, and not the mapped M drive. Navigate to this folder using the network connection and not the M drive, like this:

• 1. Click Select Folder and wait for iTunes to re-import all the music. This may take hours to complete so run it overnight.

  2. iTunes will not actually duplicate the music files, since it has been told to import them into the exact same location as where they are currently. The result however is that it will re-buid the index (Libray catalog).